Globalization has bound people, countries, and markets closer than
ever, rendering national borders relics of a bygone era—or so we’re
told. But a close look at the data reveals a world that’s just a
fraction as integrated as the one we thought we knew. In fact, more
than 90 percent of all phone calls, Web traffic, and investment is
local. What’s more, even this small level of globalization could still
slip away.

I read Friedman's The World is Flat while in Israel early this year. Like Ireland, it's a small, globalised country, with its own diaspora of perhaps a million people, a vibrant high-tech economy and a huge amount of cultural interchange. Still, the state is extremely important, both for facing the security challenges and in anchoring the identity of a country that is culturally very different from the UK or America, never mind its Arab neighbours.

Comments

Nah, Friedman has other problems with his methodology, but there's no evidence for a race to the bottom, certainly in the environmental arena. The environmental Kuznets curve, showing an inverse-U relationship between GDP per head and pollution still holds and has been shifting downwards, with less pollution at each income level, over time.